


At the Crossroads of Oy and Vey

by Kryptaria



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (Actually It Is), Accidental Crossroads Summoning, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, This Is Not Your Grandma's Demon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 07:23:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15286638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kryptaria/pseuds/Kryptaria
Summary: By now, Dean Winchester's got the whole crossroads demon summoning thing down to an art. Really.





	At the Crossroads of Oy and Vey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [metarachel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/metarachel/gifts).



> Special thanks to Brina, Stacey, Zephyrfox, and Scriptrixlatinae for the beta, and thanks to my bubbe for making the best kasha varnishkes on the planet.

People called New York City the “city that never sleeps,” or so Dean had heard. It was true, at least for Brooklyn, assuming Brooklyn was part of NYC. He still hadn’t figured out the whole “Five Boroughs” thing.

Not that he cared about names. Right now, the only thing he cared about was that the entire damn place was hell for a hunter, meaning he’d been driving for about a week to try and find a crossroads that wasn't paved over or crowded with pedestrians even at three in the morning. The closest he’d come up with was a triangle-shaped park, about the size of the Impala, with some dirt, a flagpole, and an evergreen tree. No yarrow flowers to hint at any previous demonic activity, but this was the best he could do without driving to the end of Long Island or upstate.

He didn’t even consider New Jersey. Not after the thing with the Jersey Devil.

He ended up having to park five blocks away, thanks to indecipherable No Parking signs that talked about snowplow access and alternate days of the week. Already sick of this whole thing, he walked back, trying to get a feel for the place. The plaque read _Alben Triangle_ , which told him absolutely nothing except that the park was probably a military memorial, with lights shining up onto an American flag, a POW flag, and some others Dean didn’t recognize.

Good enough. If anyone asked, he could say he was there in memory of his dad.

He hopped the fence and tried to look like he fit in, though he didn’t come close, even at this hour. The neighborhood was full of bearded men in black suits and hats and women in long dresses with their hair covered. It felt vaguely wrong, summoning a crossroads demon in the middle of an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, but Dean didn’t have time to waste. He needed answers, and he needed them now.

So he made a show of respectfully looking at the flag before bowing his head, scuffing at the dirt with his foot. Once he had a shallow trench, he surreptitiously dropped a tiny manilla envelope. It had once contained spare buttons for the suit he’d bought on clearance; now it held the usual creepy crap, only minimized. A tiny photo, a pinch of dried yarrow, a couple grains of graveyard dirt, and a piece of chicken bone, since he liked cats way too much to go digging one up from a pet cemetary. Besides, demons weren’t all that picky, especially when a Winchester came calling.

He scraped dirt over the envelope and hopped back over the fence. His smartphone gave him the excuse to loiter and try for a good selfie, though the streetlights meant his phone kept using the flash and he hadn’t figured out how to get rid of red-eye.

Speaking of red eyes... He heard deliberate footsteps approach, so he tucked the phone safely inside his jacket, put on his game face, and turned.

Instead of a hot demon in a sharp suit or slinky dress, though, a little old woman was heading his way. She was maybe four feet tall even with inch-thick orthopedic shoes, but she was no gaunt specter. She was plump, her white hair styled in a way that made Dean think they offered curlers and those whole-head drying machines at whatever passed for hair salons in Hell. Her shapeless floral print dress hung down to her knees, revealing thick white stockings, the kind they gave to people with circulatory problems, and she was hugging a puke-green knitted shawl around her stooped shoulders.

“Oy. Look at you,” she said in an accent so thick, he almost couldn’t understand her. “This is what you wear to call me? That schmata? You can’t put on a nice sweater?”

Dean’s whole speech — heavy on the threats, light on the “and if you _do_ do as I say, I’ll be nice and send you back in one piece” — flew out his ears. “I —” was as far as he got.

“I. _I_.” Grandma Demon scoffed, and Dean recoiled, fully expecting her to breathe fire, but all he caught was a whiff of garlic and Aspercreme. “It’s always about you. Do you ever think to come visit? To write? No!”

“Look —”

“Making me come to you,” she said. Her huff was full of disgust and disappointment, not sulfur. “You think I don’t worry about you, the way you run around like that? You never call, you never write —”

“Lady —”

Dean was fast — he had to be, to have survived this long, not counting all the times he’d died — but he never saw the old lady’s hand move. Fast as a whip, she smacked the back of his head, even though he was a good two feet taller than her.

“Don’t interrupt! Don’t you have any manners?”

“Sorry,” Dean said automatically, rubbing the back of his head. It didn’t hurt, which was the cherry on top of the bizarro-world sundae because demons never passed up the chance to inject a little sadistic fun into their negotiations.

“That’s better,” Grandma Demon said, clenching her gnarled hands into fists and resting them on her hips. “Now what do you want? A nice girl? A boy? Or does it not matter?”

“A — A _what?_ ”

“Look at you. You’re not married already,” Grandma Demon said, looking Dean up and down like a drill sergeant who couldn’t count high enough to record the uniform infractions she saw. “Nobody would let you leave the house looking like that.”

Dean held up his hands. “I do _not_ need dating advice.”

Grandma Demon snorted again. “That’s what _you_ think. But hey, what do I know? I’ve only been making happy marriages all my life. You _obviously_ don’t need help, standing out in the cold without decent socks, your hems coming undone, and _that_.” She pointed a the Gnarled Finger of Judgment at either his plaid overshirt or his jacket. “Go ahead. Get some shiksa pregnant and marry her. Break my heart and stomp on the pieces, why don’t you?”

In a career of weird, this had to be a new high. Or a new low. Dean shook his head, saying, “Okay, enough! Nobody’s getting pregnant!”

“Aaaah.” She smiled, showing off a creepily perfect set of dentures. “Is that the problem? Your _schmeckel_ won’t...” This time, she pointed a lot lower and crooked her finger.

 _“No!”_ He couldn’t help but drop his hands, protectively crossed in front of the body part that was most definitely _not_ called a “schmeckel.”

“Then what _do_ you want? Or did you stop by just to say hello, for the first time in twenty years, Mr. I’m Too Important To See My Bubbe?”

Dean stared at her suspiciously, finally falling back on the oldest anti-demon threat in the books. “I’m Dean Winchester.”

Instead of recoiling in fear or cackling with glee that Dean Winchester — _The_ Dean Winchester — was here to bargain, she peered right back at him. “‘Dean Winchester’?” she repeated as if she’d never heard the name before. “ _That’s_ what you’re calling yourself? What’s wrong with your real name?”

“That —” Dean frowned. “What do you think my real name is?”

She scoffed. “Daniel Aaron Winterbaum.” Another whipcrack-fast smack on the back of his head. “Did you change your name? You were named for your grandfather, you ungrateful —”

“Whoa, whoa, lady!” Dean put up his hands again, wondering how the _hell_ someone about two hundred years old could move that quick. “I’m not this Daniel Whatever!”

Her fists went right back to her hips, and Dean relaxed a tiny bit. It was threatening but not imminently dangerous. “Then what are you bothering me for, huh? Are you selling something?”

No force on Earth or in Hell could compel Dean to tell this terrifying little old demon or whatever that he’d planned on gambling with his soul. Yeah, he’d planned on _winning_ , but he suspected she wouldn’t approve even of the attempt. And if he didn’t get this sorted out quickly, he’d probably end up with a concussion.

“Are you... dead?”

She stared at him as if she’d stepped in something squishy that he’d dropped on her floor. “No, I’m walking around the _shtetl_ at three o’clock in the morning for my health.”

“Right. Okay.” As a hunter, he should’ve asked where her bones were so he could burn them and put her to rest, but he suspected that would earn him another smack. Besides, she seemed to have the whole ghost gig down pat, without the side of bonus rage and mayhem.

“Well?” she demanded, moving her hands, though only to cross her arms over her shawl. “You’re not my great-grandson, you’re not looking for a match. What do you want?”

She’d sniff out a lie a mile away, and he didn’t think she’d take “nothing” for an answer. “I’m looking for a demon. I’m a hunter.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oy vey ist mir,” she muttered, looking to the sky and holding up her hands as if asking for divine intervention, and Dean couldn’t help but flinch, anticipating a bolt of Heavenly lightning to shoot down at her command. But nothing happened, and she gave a deep sigh, looking at him in profound disappointment. “There are no demons here,” she said, slowly and clearly, enunciating each word, which made her accent worse, not better.

“Got it. Yes, ma’am.” He took a step back, prepared to bolt if she so much as flinched in his direction.

“Don’t you dare leave,” she warned, breaking out the Finger of Judgment again. “You pick up the _fakakta tchatchkes_ you dropped.” She pointed right at where Dean had buried the summoning components. “Littering, here!”

Dean had faced the forces of Heaven and Hell, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and everything in between. None of it prepared him for this.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and jumped the fence.

“Oy!” she shouted so sharply that he stumbled. He spun and saw she’d crossed her arms again. “Use the gate like a person! What are you, a goat? What do they teach kids these days?”

There was no point in arguing. Dean crouched and dug up the manilla envelope, which he hastily stuffed in his pocket.

“What are you doing?” the woman demanded in horror. “Get your hand out of your pocket! Do you think your clothes wash themselves? And now you’ve got _schmutz_ under your fingernails.”

 _Do not kill the dead old lady,_ Dean told himself irrationally, going around to the park gate. He let himself out, then latched the gate politely, lest he earn himself another scolding.

“Are you _sure_ you don’t need a wife?” the old woman asked skeptically. “Or a husband? I can get you a husband.”

Of all the bad ideas on the planet, that was the _worst_ of them.

But before he could say no, she peered at him, eyes narrowed intently, and then got a grin that sent chills right down his spine. “A _nice_ husband. One with a good job, so you don’t have to dress like a frump. Maybe an accountant.”

Panic spiked through Dean as he realized she might be a witch, or the Jewish equivalent — some sort of magic-wielding neighborhood dating service. He pushed all thoughts of hot accountant-types out of his mind and said, “Nope, I’m good. Thanks a whole lot, sorry about the mess, you have a nice, uh, afterlife.”

Then he bolted, to the sound of her echoing laughter. And even though the Impala was blocks away, he could hear her say, as clearly as if she were in the back seat, “You change your mind, let me know, _bubbala._ I have just the one for you.”


End file.
